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Nov. 11, 2013 -- Garden season yields one big mystery

By: Larry Moore

Published On: Nov 11 2013 12:00:00 AM CST

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -

I finally put away my vegetable garden the other day for another year. It's a task I always do with mixed emotions. It's a happy time as I recall the wonderful tasty veggies it yielded all last spring and summer. And then I get a bit sad because I know we have a lot of snow and ice and cold to go through before I can pick a ripe tomato again.

However, this year really was different from any year in the past. I have grown tomatoes for more than 50 years, going back to my professional truck gardening days of high school. I can't ever remember not having a bumper crop. It was part of the way I paid school expenses, so tomatoes had to produce.

This year, however, was truly a disappointment. For the past several years I have planted 51 tomato plants of five different varieties. Those plants with soybean meal and other soil amendments added always produced enough tomatoes for food pantries, all of our extended families, for friends and co-workers, neighbors and for Ruth and myself. We always had tomatoes left over.

This year was a shocker. On the eve of the Fourth of July, I shot pictures of the beautiful plants in full bloom and setting on countless green tomatoes. I noticed a couple had a slight wilt problem but I thought nothing of it. Twenty four hours later on the night of the Fourth of July 49 of my 51 plants were near death.

By the next day they were dead, all 49. No amount of water resuscitation could help. I even washed the plants with water thinking maybe pesticide fumes from a crop duster might have affected them. I took plants to plant pathologists and to extension horticulturalists and to Master gardeners. No one could find an answer.

I put the problem on our website. I talked about it on the air. I explained it to almost every gardener I met. Nobody could answer why. So I end the gardening season with a true mystery that has no answer. If you have a thought I'd love to hear it. In the meantime, I am truly concerned about next year. What if it should happen again?

Larry Moore

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